GLOBAL MEDIA FORUM 2021

High profile, hybridand for everyone

Disruptive change needs innovative thinkers, inspiring topics and interdisciplinary exchange. On June 14 and 15, the Global Media Forum will provide the platform and the conference program to do exactly this—journalistically crafted, diverse across all borders and accessible for everyone at dw.com/gmf

by Martina Bertram, DW editor

Renowned experts from media, politics, culture and science as well as business and civil society will discuss “Disruption and Innovation” in the predominantly digital realm this year. Joining us, amongst many others: video blogger Nuseir Yassin, Pulitzer Prize winner Anne Applebaum and Jesper Doub from Facebook. They will discuss the challenges of disruptive innovations and at the same time address opportunities to influence these developments.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel will open the conference. Armin Laschet, Minister-President of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia and leader of Germany’s governing CDU party as well as Michelle Müntefering, Minister of State for International Cultural Policy at the German Federal Foreign Office, will also address the audience. The prominent line-up of the digital forum also includes Maria Ressa, who has just received the UNESCO Press Freedom Prize, and Irene Khan, UN rapporteur for press freedom (see interview). In addition, Liberian Nobel Peace Prize laureate Leymah Gbowee and EU Commission Vice President Věra Jourová will participate in panel discussions this year. Taiwan’s Digital Minister Audrey Tang will focus her contribution on the importance of technological innovation for democracy while Noel Curran, director general European Broadcasting Corporation (EBU), and Jessica Zucker from Facebook will discuss how media can regain the trust that has been lost through misinformation campaigns. Also joining the 2021 Global Media Forum is Felipe Neto. The Brazilian YouTuber is one of the most watched youtubers in the world and is considered a harsh critic of Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro. Artificial intelligence and its global spread in surveillance technology will be the topic of the talk panel with Manny Maung, Asia researcher for Human Rights Watch, who will report on her work in Myanmar. U.S. historian Timothy Snyder will speak on “Disrupted democracies and the media.” Also confirmed are Ling Fan, founder and CEO of Tezign, and Philip Justus of Google. Iranian human rights activist Masih Alinejad will report on niches and opportunities for press freedom, the topic which Annalena Baerbock, chairwoman of the Green Party of Germany, will also address in her keynote. The importance of diversity for society and the media will be the topic of a talk with British-Turkish novelist Elif Shafak and Ellen Ehni, editor-in-chief at Germany’s public broadcaster WDR. Constructive approaches to journalism will be explored by Ulrik Haagerup, founder and CEO of the Constructive Institute.

Imme Baumüller of the German newspaper Handelsblatt and Nic Newman, senior research associate at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, will spotlight how data can be used to make journalism profitable and successful in the digital world. Philip F. Howard from the Oxford Internet Institute (OII) and Thomas Schmid, director of the Media Authority of North Rhine-Westphalia, and chairman of the European Regulators Group for Audiovisual Media Services (ERGA), will discuss social media, responsibility and regulation.

“Place made for minds”

The DW Global Media Forum 2021 is accessible to everyone free of charge after registration on dw.com/gmf. You can expect two days full of discussion and exchange, including 14 partner sessions to deepen and expand your knowledge. Networking opportunities, an international start-up contest, an online game and the award ceremony for of the DW Freedom of Speech Award 2021 round up the conference program.

The partner sessions will host a variety of sessions and thus create their own streaming channel on the platform. These include contributions from the Friedrich Naumann Foundation (based in Istanbul), the Federal Association of German Newspaper Publishers (Berlin) and the Goethe-Institut (Munich). In addition, the Global Media Forum has invited startups worldwide to participate in a competition related to the topic “Disruption and Innovation.” After the pitch phase, an international jury will select three winners who will be presented at the Global Media Forum.

As in the past years, around 200 fellows, digital media professionals from all over the world, have been invited to the DW Global Media Forum Fellowship Program. They will digitally join a series of capacity building workshops exclusively tailored for them. A unique part of the conference, the fellows will also contribute their ideas and experiences to the main program.

Angela Merkel, German Chancellor

© Bundesregierung / Steffen Kugler

Leymah Gbowee, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate

© picture alliance / Pacific Press / Mario Rimati

Felipe Neto, Brazilian YouTuber

© Fabio Motta

Věra Jourová, European Commission Vice-President for Values and Transparency

© EU / Chara Kaminara-Pipitsouli

Elif Shafak, British-Turkish novelist

© picture alliance / Photoshot

Nic Newman, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism

© private

2021 partners

The DW Global Media Forum is supported by its partners: the German Federal Foreign Office and the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media, the City of Bonn and the Foundation for International Dialogue of the Savings Bank in Bonn.

Journalists face danger to life even outside war zones

Irene Khan will participate in the Global Media Forum 2021 on June14 in the panel on media freedom in times of disruption.

Irene Khan fears for the lives of journalists—especially women. As UN special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of expression, she observes a worrying trend—and fights to reverse it.

Interview conducted by Martina Bertram, DW editor

When autocratic governments take over and expand their power, independent media outlets are typically the first targets in the eyes of such political actors. What kind of reports of such violations do you currently have to address the most, and what methods of suppression are mostly being used against journalists?

The safety of journalists is an issue in every region of the world, from Mexico to Malta to Myanmar. The fact that journalists today are killed outside war zones is an indication of the gravity of the problem. Investigative journalists, in particular, are threatened for the work they do to expose organized crime, corruption and abuse of power.

Just this week, two Spanish journalists were ambushed and killed in Burkina Faso while investigating poaching practices. Only one in ten killings of journalists is ever investigated. In addition to killings and physical attacks, journalists and media workers are threatened with prosecution, arrest, imprisonment, and—especially in the case of women journalists—with sexual harassment and violence. Another worrying trend is the stigmatizing of journalists and their work by political leaders. We also see smear campaigns being widely used to discredit and attack journalists and to tarnish their honest reporting.

The use of laws to suppress and criminalize journalists is a truly disturbing trend. What can your mandate in the UN do in terms of legal support to protect journalists?

Unfortunately, criminal libel, a legacy of the colonial times in many countries, continues to be used as a major tool to threaten and silence journalists today. There has also been a spike in vague and overly broad “false news” laws that give unwarranted discretion to state authorities to prosecute journalists or curtail media freedom. Some governments have used the pandemic as an excuse to clamp down on media freedom. According to a study conducted by the International Press Institute, 17 countries worldwide rushed to pass “fake news” emergency laws in the first eight months of the pandemic.

My task as the UN’s independent expert is to press upon states to respect international human rights standards, to speak out when human rights are violated and recommend ways in which these laws can be revised or removed. The power I have is that of a moral advocate—to amplify the complaints I receive from civil society and media organizations and press for change.

Many politicians around the world are increasingly using intermediaries such as Facebook and YouTube to communicate directly with the public. Does freedom of speech no longer need free media?

Digital technology has opened up communications possibilities tremendously. Social media platforms are a major means today of reaching out directly to large audiences, not just for politicians but for all of us. Unfortunately, they also provide opportunities for false or manipulated information to be easily spread and amplified at a scale, speed and reach never known before.

Unfortunately, legacy media, including local media, has come under pressure in this digital age, and in many cases is struggling to adjust to these new and challenging circumstances. However, what our experience across the world shows—whether in developed countries like the United States or the members of the European Union or in developing countries—is that social media platforms are no substitute for open, independent, and diverse media as source of public information and quality journalism, or as an antidote to disinformation and misinformation.

Media freedom is a major pillar of democracy and human rights and must be safeguarded and nurtured as an essential element of the modern information ecosystem.

Major tech companies and policymakers are rethinking how they use algorithms to deal with disinformation. At what point do states or confederations of governments need to intervene here and protect the public good of their citizens—and from whom exactly?

Tackling disinformation is a complex endeavor, and states, companies, civil society and media organizations all need to be involved. More than a decade ago the United Nations adopted the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. It sets out the respective roles and responsibilities of companies and states. While companies do not have the same human rights obligations as states, they are obliged to respect human rights in their activities and operations.

States are obliged not only to respect and promote human rights themselves but also to protect human rights by ensuring that companies respect human rights.

In short, what that in this particular instance means is that states must ensure data protection by law and adopt regulation to compel platforms to adopt high standards of transparency and accountability, provide remedies to users and undertake human rights due diligence and impact assessment of their products and activities. The platforms must adopt human rights policies as the basis of the community standards and carry out human rights due diligence and also as impact of their work on all human rights, including the freedom of opinion and expression.

You are the first woman to hold this mandate since its creation in 1993. When you look at the right to freedom of opinion and expression from a gender perspective, what are your main goals?

One of my top priorities is to put a gender lens on freedom of opinion and expression. I want to bring a strong gender perspective to the work of the mandate, both by mainstreaming gender in all aspects of my work as well as highlighting some distinct issues relating to women and girls.

In a recent survey by the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) and UNESCO, 23 percent of women journalists and media workers who participated reported being targeted with offline abuse and attacks that they believe were connected with online violence they had experienced.

There is also considerable gender discrimination in women’s access to information, a widening gender gap in internet use in developing countries, online harassment and violence against women, misogyny in the media and unequal treatment of women journalists to name just a few issues among others that require more attention.

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